(McLaren Mercedes)
McLaren Racing Director Eric Boullier believes that Formula One is 'shooting itself in the foot' due to the fact that negativity has clouded the sports attempts to attract new fans to the sport and has resulted in existing fans turning their backs on the sport. Boullier believes that sport should be promoting the fact that it has had great exciting Grand Prix nearly every race this season.
The Frenchman also believes that the sport needs to start engaging more with its fans. It has has already been suggested that the sport should do things like offer garage tours during the pit-lane walk about which takes place on the Thursday prior to each Grand Prix where fans get to watch teams prepare the cars for the weekend. Red Bull boss Christian Horner also believes that paddock tours should also be introduced to give fans a behind the scenes look at what goes on in the sport.
Mercedes non executive chairman Niki Lauda believes the blame for the decline in audience numbers in F1 is squarely the responsibility of the individual countries race promoters.
The Austrian believes that Red Bull had the right idea for the Austrian Grand Prix in Spielberg as they promoted the race by advertising tickets on local radio. He also wondered why the British Grand Prix in Silverstone was such a great success and this reason for this was as he explained due to the fact that over the course of the weekend there were legend race's on over the course of the weekend aswell as the usual F1 action.
The sport has also been criticized for not doing more in the way of promoting itself through new media like social networking as all of the teams and many of the driver's are on Twitter where they communicate with fans.
© Ben Johnston 2014
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